I’ve been thinking a lot about animals lately. I took a trip to the zoo last week and I can’t stop thinking about something weird I saw. I was standing outside the monkeys area, watching all these eerily people-like orangutans jumping, playing, fighting, etc.

My eyes wondered nearby and I noticed on the ground next to me was this incredible swarm/army of black ants. The beefy kind. There must have been thousands of them, all in this one little spot, scrambling in and out of a hole in the ground.

I mean, there must be trillions – if not quadrillions – of them on planet Earth. They are everywhere, numbering in thousands at a time. They could totally rise together and eat monkeys. If they took down one monkey, the whole clan would be fed for a good decade, assuming they could keep the meat fresh.

I have pondered a few reasons why this would actually not benefit the ant population. Here’s a sample:

Monkey meat is probably quite tough (all that swinging). I’m not sure if ants have teeth, but if they do; ouch.

Ants are incredible smart creatures. They probably look down at the monkeys (as they watch them up there swinging in the trees) and think, Blech. Something so easy to catch would probably make us stupider.

The hairballs. *shudder*

I’m pretty satisfied with my hypotheses, but you may not be. Any more ideas?

Just recieved an email with this new press release from the Answers folks. It goes on and on about “revenues,” puts the letter Q in front of numbers, and uses words like “sequential,” so I’m taking from it the bit that I think the rest of us really care about.

WikiAnswers’ revenue is up 27% in the last three months: If revenue is up, it must mean that questions, answers, members and community participation are probably up, as well. And that makes for a wonderfully involved Q&A social knowledge site, which is what WikiAnswers is.

Folks, this is last call for signing up to participate in the second WikiAnswers AnswerThon, which starts tonight at 12:00 am EDT.

It’s the charity-edition AnswerThon, where your answers are actually sponsoring the charity you choose from the available list. The charity with the most answers at the end of 48 hours will receive a $5,000 donation from WikiAnswers.

Of course, the top answerers will receive a small token of their own, so make sure you have your favorite category set up and dig in!

Does PICNIC = BEES? Why are there always so many bees at picnics? Just today, I was lunching outdoors with a friend when a humongous furry bee-thing decided to Merengue in our marinara. After 10 terrifying minutes, we packed up the food and went inside.

So, what attracted that bee to our spaghetti?

Bees are simply attracted to picnics for the same reason humans are: food! Honey bees are attracted to sweets (hello, apple juice can!) and water (we had some of that, too). They also like tree sap (they use it to caulk up their nests to keep the ants out).

What’s bugging me is: I’d rather have my picnic and eat, too. Can you help me?